Our checks at markets in Accra ahead of the Christmas celebrations have revealed that traders are concerned about low sales this year compared to the same period last year.
Their general opinion is that the situation may be due to the ever-rising prices of goods, which some of them attributed to the high duties charged at the ports.
This is to suggest that the government is part of the problem.
Listen to a trader saying that: “The price at which we buy from China and other places is the same, but the port duties have increased, which is affecting the pricing of our goods.” (See our story on page 12)
After saying this, the trader expressed the hope that things would change for the better.
However, we think the trader’s hope would only be a far cry except the government rethinks port charges to cause prices of goods to fall.
The government would also have to do all it can to check the free fall of the cedi to the dollar because some of the traders and others think the fall also affects prices of goods and services in the country.
Interestingly, some of the traders said the low patronage was due to the fact that workers had not been paid and that when they are paid, they would shop for the Christmas.
Even though that opinion holds to some extent, the truth is that the economic hardship in the country has already devalued earnings, so workers cannot shop much.
We therefore appeal to the government to consider all it can do to address the economic challenges in the country, particularly with regard to bringing down the prices of food to give some relief to the citizenry, as a good number of them find it difficult to afford just one meal a day.
And if the government is going to make any move in that direction, then it should consider the suggestions made by panellists at a forum on food inflation held in Accra who have called for the promulgation of consumer protection and marketplace competition laws to deal with unfair pricing of food in the country.
Their suggestion is in sync with a trader’s call on the government to regulate prices of goods.
We support the suggestions by the panellists and we are particularly happy with their advocate for the introduction of a weight measurement system to check the discretion of market queens and retailers in determining prices of food.
In fact, market queens are a huge problem in the country as some of them can even stop some people, particularly traders from the hinterlands, from selling at certain markets they claim to be “theirs”.
They do this with all the impunity because these traders do not want them to hijack their wares and price them their own way and give the traders whatever the market queens deem as right.
We, therefore, agree that the government must put in place a system to regulate food prices in the country, thereby eliminate personalities and attitudes that cause food prices to exorbitantly rise to the hurt of consumers.
